Maureen O’Brien, a parenting expert who holds a doctorate in child development, said she often recommends — once a child is about 6 to 8 years old — that parents start explaining to them why certain rules exist and even letting them set some themselves. O’Brien said these rules should be clearly posted somewhere with easy to understand language.

“It allows the parent to say, ‘What did we agree to?'” said O’Brien, who is the director of curriculum and training at the parenting programFamilies First. “It takes some of the me-versus-you out of it and makes it a more third-party objective . . . that we talked about together.”